Yet of the man who could In short, there was a great quarrel | dying muse. with Southey; and, ah, how fresh and write "Youth and Age " (vaguely dated absurd and inspired these young men 1822-32), we may deem that his muse were! Ah, le beau temps, quand nous was not dead but sleeping. Occasionn'avions pas le sens commun ! ally, he himself was of this opinion; the "heaven-sent moment," only, was needed" for this skill." The genesis of the "Ancient Mar 66 It Till we reach the series written in the year 1797, or perhaps 1798, I cannot say that Coleridge's poems appear, to myself, of much promise. "Lewti "iner" is well known; every one has has a charming melody, but Bowles heard how Wordsworth and Coleridge and Gray inspire most of the others, premeditated a poetic pot-boiler; when they are neither inspired by met- how "The Brownies gave the initial aphysics nor by politics, nor by pity idea, in a dream of a friend of Colefor the fortunes of the poor. The lines ridge's; how Wordsworth hit on the on that theme, in "Religious Mus- albatross, and the crew of the dead, ings," are, indeed, nobly vehement, and how Coleridge wrote the poem. but Coleridge's blank verse was still is unique among his works, and among without charm and distinction. It is the works of men. We learn nothing not till 1797 (according to his recollec-new about the poem from the letters, tion), or till 1798, if Mr. Ernest Cole- the "Table Talk" lends a note on the ridge is right, that we arrive at "Kubla | origin of “grinning for joy." ColeKhan." On Mr. Ernest Coleridge's ridge promised, but never wrote, an system, "Kubla Khan" did not pre- essay on the function of imagination cede, but followed, in 1798, the "An- in such works as his famous ballad. cient Mariner," which was begun on About "Christabel," he said what he November, 1797. The dream poem had to say, nineteen years after 1797, was written after a quarrel with Lloyd, when he began the piece. who had domesticated" with Cole- "In the very first conception of the ridge, and that quarrel was of 1798. tale, I had the whole present to my Thus the "Ancient Mariner" must mind, with the wholeness, no less than precede "Kubla Khan," in date, and, the liveliness, of a vision." When did as Mr. Ernest Coleridge thinks, in nat- the "vision" appear to him, and ural order of development. "It would where? Coleridge talks, in one of the have been altogether miraculous if new letters (October 9, 1800) about before Christabel and the Ancient "Christabel ""running up to thirteen Mariner' it had been given to him' hundred lines,' or again, "fourteen to divine the enchanting images of hundred lines;" but where are the 'Kubla Khan,' or attune his mysteri- missing seven hundred? His expresous vision to consummate harmony." sions, in 1816, suggest that "ChrisBut all these poems are "miracu- tabel," like "Kubla Khan," flashed ou lous;" all seem to have been "given" him in a dream, beautiful, sudden, by the dreaming "subconscious self" complete, 66 as Ilium, like a mist, rose of Coleridge. The earliest pieces hold into towers." The aid of " an anono promise of these marvels. They dyne" to "Kubla Khan" is confessed. come from what is oldest in Coleridge's Conceivably similar help was lent to nature, his uuinvited and irrepressible" Christabel." But psychology, or paintuitions, magical and rare, vivid be- thology, will never have any informayond common sight of common things, tion on this point. Coleridge, it is sweet beyond sound of things heard. probable, even at school, had been The years in which such gifts were dosed, or had dosed himself, medicigiven to Coleridge are few. The beau-nally, with anodynes. Not till 1801, it tiful "Dejection, an Ode" (whence seems, did the habit become his master. the inspiration of the "Ode to Immor- We cannot tell certainly whether what tality manifestly came), is of 1802, was given to him" in 1797 was partly and has been called a swan song of a given by the papuakov čothóν of Helen. . 66 On a less mysterious question, Cole- | admiration. How alluring and attracridge writes, "I did not overhugely tive he himself was, Miss Wordsworth admire the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' tells us. Coleridge could always win a but saw no likeness whatever to kind of adoring affection, by personal Christabel,' much less any improper qualities which his letters hardly reresemblance." Three years later veal. (1810) a letter signed S. T. C. in the In the spring of 1798 he quarrelled Courier, accused Scott of plagiarism. with Lamb; tattlers caused the breach, This letter Coleridge disavowed, a sonnet also intervened. On July through Southey. Lockhart admits 29, 1801, Coleridge speaks his mind Scott's adoption of "something like very freely about his wife to Southey. the cadence" of "Christabel." Scott" "Never, I suppose, did the stern frankly calls himself Coleridge's "pu-match-maker bring together two minds pil," and Coleridge's own view of the so utterly contrariant in their primary affair wavered with his mood. and organical constitution." The poor As to "Kubla Khan," I see no lady promises "to fight against her inreason to doubt that Coleridge dreamed veterate habits of puny thwarting and the poem, and only wrote down, when unintermitting dyspathy." At the moawake, what he remembered out of his ment they were happier, but the end dream. "The images rose up before was plain from the beginning. We him as things, with a parallel produc- meet the first melancholy notes of tion of of the corresponding expres-"good resolutions," of swollen knees, sions." It is not unusual to dream of opium; and the tour in the Highverses, to remember them is rare, to lands sees the first composition of find them worth remembering is rarer “The Pains of Sleep." He had yet, but this might occur. -to Cole-dreams from which it was bliss to ridge. I am acquainted with a case in waken with a yell, though his yells did which a very great poet, producing a not add to the happiness of his hosts piece inconsistent with his natural and neighbors. His stomach, like Mr. character, afterwards declared that he Carlyle's, was the home of mysterious had written unconsciously, and did not woes. It is just as likely that opium know what he had written! The story was taken to lull these troubles, as that reaches me from the person to whom opium caused them. He sought relief the poet told it. Again, a well-known in travel; he did not answer letters, or writer has a composition among his his answers did not arrive. He omiworks, of which his first conscious nously turned over a new leaf on Janknowledge was obtained when he saw uary 1, 1809. But the death of Dr. the piece, with his name above it, in Beddoes a few days before would rob print. This corresponds with what Coleridge of a newly found support, Thackeray and Scott tell about "The and "take out of his life the hope of Bride of Lammermoor,' ," and part of self-conquest." He lived a wanderer, Pendennis." These anecdotes are at flitting from place to place. His intenleast as strange as the dreaming of tion of dwelling with Mr. Basil Mon· Kubla Khan" in a non-natural sleep. tagu was the occasion of a painful But by Coleridge only could it have quarrel with Wordsworth. A long been dreamed. letter of May 4, 1811, to the poet, conThe intercourse with the Words-tains Coleridge's statement of his case. worths displays Coleridge in the happiest light. The Wedgwoods had made him free from some cares by an annuity of £150, half of which was later withdrawn by Josiah, in a manner little to his honor. Coleridge had now in Wordsworth a friend on whom he could bestow all his faculty of reverent heard them incorrectly. Wordsworth The trouble began in October, 1810. Wordsworth, not judiciously, had thought it right to give Mr. Montagu his opinion about Coleridge as a guest, and Montagu, most mischievously, repeated the remarks (probably inaccurately) to Coleridge, who may have Finally, in 1816, Coleridge really did acknowledged that he might have said | sense enough to discourage WordsColeridge's habits were a nuisance to worth from translating Virgil into the family. No doubt they were, aud, verse. "To read page after page withof all people, Coleridge must choose out a single brilliant note depresses poor Mary Lamb for his confidences; me." and then indulge "in long weeping." Poets, as Mr. Arthur Pendennis achieve, self-conquest in a manner, for truly remarks, do feel more acutely he put himself into the charge of Mr. than other people, and when they feel Gillman. This indicates unusual resothey do not groan soft, they groan lution for such unhappy tendencies are loud; like another hero of fiction. generally accompanied by an angry And then Mr. Sharon Turner, dining pride (as in Prince Charlie's case), and at Mr. Lougman's, " trumpets abroad " a conviction that the patient is in the the story of the dispute. Finally to- right, and every one else in the wrong. day the wretched story is published His passions of repentance, though tryafresh, and we are to moralize the tale. ing, were not wholly false, his religious Wordsworth made a mistake. Mou- emotions were genuine, and with the tagu was an ass. Coleridge, really Gillmans he found "a welcome which wronged, was too free in his lamenta- lasted to the day of his death." As tions. But the general result was to Mr. Ernest Coleridge finely says, keep him at a distance from the salu-"their patience must have been inexbrious influence of Wordsworth, as he haustible, their loyalty unimpeachable, was already remote from his wife, and their love indestructible." A note to from the charming children to whom p. 658 shows in the editor au honorable he was warmly attached. candor. A genius unexampled, both in volume, diversity, and distinction, a fond heart, a fascinating manner, all were given to Coleridge, and all actually, by some malignant spell, wrought against his happiness. He had more genius than half-a-dozen men could have used, and with it a mysterious martyrdom of pain. His first true love was thwarted, and his ardent friendship made him feel a breach as a less affectionate man could not have felt it. There came a new rupture with Wordsworth, or the old was revived. The success of his play, Remorse," was a transitory gleam on a dark chaos of lectures, brilliant but unpunctual. Even Poole was "unkind," and the Wedgwood annuity was diminished by one-half. We see Coleridge, as he says in a letter long since published, "beating pain by a constant recurrence to the vice that reproduces it." His self-accusations (p. 624) become maudlin and incredible. He had Tantalus dreams of books to be written which were never written. Nay, as Scott, in his last days, had fancies that his debts were already paid, Coleridge believed (or said) that these books were written. He retained It As to Coleridge's later oracular days, his metaphysics, his "abysmal A-seity," it would ill become one to speak who is invincibly ignorant of the subject. Probably he was a great philosopher, as he was a great poet, a great if discursive critic, and (so Mr. Traill bears witness) almost a heaven-born political journalist. Only those who saw and heard him can have any conception of his "involuntary speech from involuntary brain action," as Miss Martineau calls his talk. Of that talk we have Carlyle's famous description. began anywhere and ended nowhere, Carlyle thought. Keats has left a brief synopsis of two miles of monologue on dreams, with a ghost story. Carlyle's verdict is, of course, narquois, but it is certain that Southey, too, was disgusted by Coleridge's "loquacity." Southey had seen too much and heard too much of his brother-in-law. the living incarnate Coleridge seems to have been a phenomenon as extraordinary as the best of his actual works. Like Burns's, Byron's, and Poe's, his life is a lesson in the pains and sorrows of genius, but, lest we should think these essentially and inevitably allied But with the highest powers, we have the like a serrated spear-head, and is conexamples of Shakespeare, Molière, tinued many miles farther west by a Wordsworth, and Scott. Thus the in- broken line of low rocks or reefs, of terconnection of dread dreams with which not a few are quite under water. poetic vision, of absent self-control Lying near the edge of a cliff above the with poetic inspiration, remains as it beautiful but terrible little Dead Men's was and will be - a riddle. The Bay (Baie des Trépassés) I listen to genius can exist without the aberra- the waves chanting the De profundis in tious, and the aberrations, unluckily, those caverns below where so many without the genius. corpses have been left by the tide. sweeping breeze vainly tries to tear aud scatter, and the melancholy samphire that clings in the crevices of the granite, seem to grow and bloom for the friendless dead. The letters and notes contain a good | Half converted by the influence of the deal of information about Coleridge's spot to the superstition of the Breton pecuniary affairs. These could not be fisherman, I fancy that I too can hear prosperous. Had he steadily lectured, the words "Domine, Domine," in the steadily contributed to the press, thunder of the waves as they roll into steadily finished his poems, and sent the darkness of the rock where the them direct to the printers, had he human waifs find rest until the next fulfilled any almost of his literary tide tosses and bruises them again. schemes, he might have supported Everything is sad or ghostly here. himself and his family in comfort. The pale pink flowers of thrift that the None of these things he did; he never took example by Southey, and he was aided again and again by friends or kinsmen. If he accepted money, at least he did not despise or detest the donors. He certainly had the con- From this bay, according to Celtic tempt of wealth, which could give him tradition, the dead Druids were emnothing. For him life and the Muse barked for burial in the Ile de Sein were sufficient. I have not thought it the largest of the reefs stretching away necessary to go into these financial de- yonder towards the west from the black tails minutely. But Mr. Ernest Cole-headland bristling with granitic spines. ridge displays an acquaintance with his Here too, according to a tradition that ancestor's life so complete and accu-may be Druidic or Christian, the ghosts rate, that one can only end by adjuring of the drowned of all nations wander him to write a full and authoritative and weep until they are at rest. When biography, full, but not too long! His the fisherman or peasant whose cottage freedom from undue partiality, his is on this desolate coast hears through candor, and family affection, fit him for the shrieking and howling of the wind the task, in which probably his phil- a knocking at his door in the night, he osophic studies enable him to dispense does not open it, but holds his breath with the aid of a specialist in meta- and prays for the dead, because he physics.1 fears that his visitor has left his body in the sea, and is now knocking with his unburied bones to obtain the dole of a prayer. Froin Temple Bar. THE GRAVE OF THE DRUIDS. A WILD sea driven by a keen northwest wind is beating against the granite rocks at the Pointe du Raz in Finistère, which stretches out into the Atlantic 1 Readers interested in Miss Mary Evans will find, in the Athenæum of May 18, an interesting letter from Coleridge to that lady. They first met, after their parting, about 1808. "Truly happy From the Baie des Trépassés my thoughts wander on the track of the dead Druids, and I have a strong wish to cross the Raz to their grave, the Rock of Mystery, where the nine virgins interpreted the oracle, and where does it make me to have seen you once more, and seen you well, prosperous, and cheerful, all that your goodness give you a title to." Miss Evans was now Mrs. Todd. sublime desolation inspired Chateaubriand to write one of his most vigorous pages of imaginative prose - the episode of Velléda in "Les Martyrs." The opportunity soon came. The inhabitants of the Ile de Sein (Enès Sûn, in Breton) have their annual Pardon early in May, and the priest who was to figure most prominently in the blessing of the sea and other ceremonies being an old friend whom I had met several years before in Brittany, I was offered a place in the boat that came over from the island to fetch him. Although the passage from the Pointe du Raz to the Ile de Sein may, under favorable circumstances, be made with- Our crossing the Raz was quite free out any risk, the islanders themselves, from peril, for there was scarcely wind however familiar they may become enough to fill the sails of the well-built with the currents and reefs, never lose fishing-boat which took us on board their respect for the Raz- as the rock- at Dead Men's Bay. As we passed strewn strait is named. How could a bevy of dark and sinister-looking corthey, when there is scarcely one of morants perched upon a low rock, the them who cannot speak of a father, a curé disturbed my ideas-I was thinkbrother, or a cousin who was lost in it ? ing that Milton was right in using the Moreover, all of them know that there cormorant as an image of Satan, alis a very strong probability that they though sitting on trees is not its habit will meet their own death in these by saying that this bird is peculiarly waters. Consequently the old Breton favored by God, inasmuch as it can fly, couplet which is on their lips from swim, dive, and walk. It really seems childhood expresses very nearly the to possess more faculties than it detruth: serves; but we know that the wicked have prospered from very ancient times, and the curé may have reasoned too hastily from appearances. Douë va sicourit evit tremen ar Raz Ar vag a zo bihan, hag ar mor a zo braz. Here I may say that I met an elderly mariner on the Ile de Sein (where the purest Breton is supposed to be spoken) who told me that in the course of his voyaging he had met Welshmen and Scotchmen whom he could understand in their own language and who could understand him. His first experience of the kind was at some port in Wales, where to his great surprise he heard people speaking what he took to be Breton. "We were all English once," is a frequent saying of these Armoricans. Biscoas den me tremenes ar raz The literal translation is: We are now in the current. There No one ever crossed the Raz without fear are great waves here, although there is or hurt. In another and a better known couplet, likewise inspired by the dangers of the Raz, is to be found the religious feeling which is so strong in all the fishing population of Brittany, and is especially so in these islanders, who, being even now in no small measure under the influence of hereditary Druidism, have the liveliest faith in the supernatural. The words have all the beauty of simplicity: The no more wind than there was before. When the boat drops down in the trough of the sea the land is lost. current is rushing towards the north. The breeze is against it, and I am told that if it were as strong again the waves would be twice as high. We pass the spot where one of the isl anders who are with us saw his father go down and another his brother. Can I wonder that their rough faces are solemn although there is no danger now? There is the great current The which flows to the north-west and to the south-east according to the tide, and there are lesser currents which flow back and form whirlpools round the rocks. Woe to the mariners who God help me in crossing the Raz. boat is little, and the sea is great. There may be those in our own islands able to give the right sound to the Celto-Breton lines: |